The Sadness Business

Have you lost a loved one? Your sadness becomes depression. Your child is a little too lively? He or she may be a danger to society. Do you have a penchant for cake? You have a psychiatric disorder. The new standard way of thinking about mental health, dictated by the publication of an international guide, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is authorian and overshadows Therapeutic Listening in favor of the drug treatment—its latest version, the DSM-5, lists more than 350 diseases. Patrick Landman exposes the abuses of such a takeover—the range of normality is reduced and we all become consumers of psychotropic drugs, and even potential lunatics. A child psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and jurist, Patrick Landman was president of the Psychoanalytical Convention and a member of the Board of Directors of Espace Analytique. He is the author of several books, including The Sadness Business, which now serves as a work of reference.